November 24 events in history

Polish Prince Leszek I the White is assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa

1248

In the middle of the night a mass on the north side of Mont Granier suddenly collapsed, in one of the largest historical rockslope failures known in Europe

1429

Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité

1542

Battle of Solway Moss: An English army defeats a much larger Scottish force near the River Esk in Dumfries and Galloway

1642

Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania)

1835

The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety)

1850

Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein

1859

Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species

1863

American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain: Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg

1906

A 13–6 victory by the Massillon Tigers over their rivals, the Canton Bulldogs, for the "Ohio League" Championship, leads to accusations that the championship series was fixed and results in the first major scandal in professional American football

1917

In Milwaukee, nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001

1922

Nine Irish Republican Army members are executed by an Irish Free State firing squad. Among them is author Robert Erskine Childers, who had been arrested for illegally carrying a revolver

World War II: The First Slovak Republic becomes a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers

1941

World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French Forces

1943

World War II: The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men

1944

World War II: Bombing of Tokyo: The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft

1950

The "Storm of the Century", a violent snowstorm, takes shape on this date before paralyzing the northeastern United States and the Appalachians the next day, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. Three hundred fifty-three people would die as a result of the storm

1962

The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin

1962

The influential British satirical television programme That Was the Week That Was is first broadcast

1963

In the first live, televised murder, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is murdered two days after the assassination, by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters

1965

Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997

Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to land on the Moon

1971

During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found

1973

A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasts only four months

1974

Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression

1976

The Çaldıran-Muradiye earthquake in eastern Turkey kills between 4,000 and 5,000 people

2012

A fire at a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, kills at least 112 people

2013

Iran signs an interim agreement with the P5+1 countries, limiting its nuclear program in exchange for reduced sanctions